


Blame It on the Bossa Nova

by Mosca



Category: Gymnastics RPF
Genre: Character Study, F/F, tourism porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 04:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8875450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: After she retires, Aliya could settle into a life of celebrity appearances and raising a family, or she could run away to paradise. Either way, Daria will be by her side.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Margaery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margaery/gifts).



> Thanks to my awesome secret betas for all their help!
> 
> This fic contains a painful breakup (not of the featured pairing), scattered vocabulary in a language the author doesn't speak, vague references to Russia's systemic homophobia, and enticement to throw your life away and move to South America.

**[Rio]**

“So marry him,” Dasha said, eyes steely and glowing like a cat’s, not letting Aliya look away. She was naked, cross-legged on the bed. Aliya had never met anyone who loved being naked as much as Dasha. At first, Aliya had thought she was showing off, but no, Dasha just thought clothes were pointless unless it was cold. Dasha would have swung bars wearing nothing but her grips if she were allowed. By now, Aliya was so used to it, she had no trouble taking Dasha seriously even when her labia were wide open, like an invitation for Aliya to flick her fingers inside.

“It feels unfair to you, somehow,” Aliya said. She squirmed on her own bed, trying to find the position easiest on her back. 

“It’s not unfair,” Dasha said. “You want a family, and Lyosha is wonderful.”

“I’ve been with you longer than I’ve been with him.” She rested her chin in her hands, winced as her back protested, and stretched her arms out in front of her.

“So you’d marry me instead? How? We’d have to move to Spain or Canada or somewhere.”

“Spain is beautiful,” Aliya said.

“You’re beautiful,” Dasha said. She got up and kissed Aliya’s outstretched fingertips. They exchanged a few awkward kisses before Aliya sat up, pulling Dasha with her. Dasha wrapped her legs around Aliya’s waist and ran her hands through Aliya’s hair, letting strands fall and collect on Aliya’s shoulders. They seemed to flow in slow motion, trapped in the tropical sunlight as if it were honey.

“This is all over when we go back to Moscow, isn’t it?” Aliya said. “You and me.”

“Why should it be? We’ve gone on this long.” Dasha kissed the tip of Aliya’s nose. “Nikita’s fine with it, and Lyosha said the same, right?”

“They both think it’s kind of sexy,” Aliya admitted.

“It seems unfair, doesn’t it? We get them and each other, but they would never.” She smiled as if imagining herself as a spectator during that encounter.

“Unfair to who?”

“Everybody!” Dasha giggled and kissed Aliya again, her tongue warm and smooth in Aliya’s mouth. Aliya knew that when she went home, she’d see Lyosha and fall in love with him all over again. She’d think of nothing but their wedding. But alone with Dasha’s pixie smile and soft little breasts, she was completely in love with Dasha, in love with the moment.

**[Moscow]**

The first two weeks after Aliya went back to Russia were all press interviews and photo opportunities. She stuck by Dasha’s side whenever she could, because all the attention drained her energy. When she couldn’t stand another moment of small talk, she imagined herself lying on a beach in Rio, the salty breeze drifting over her skin. She wished she could be the best gymnast in Russia without having to show up to so many events. She had no talent for feigning interest in strangers and remembering to say the right thing. 

The celebration period died down, and Aliya finally had time for Lyosha. She started telling him about Brazil: the sun and the ocean, the sweet creamy coffee you could sip for hours, the way it always felt like there was music playing somewhere just on the edge of hearing. He nodded along, humoring her. She hoped he’d perk up when she changed the subject to winning gold on bars, but that seemed to bore him, too. “What’s new with you?” she asked. “Sledding down hills even in the summertime?”

“Thinking about you,” he said. He fished in his pocket and produced a jewelry box. As he opened it, he got down on one knee.

Aliya felt tears in her eyes and dug her teeth into her lower lip to fight them off. Before Rio, this would have been such an easy yes. But when she tried, she couldn’t produce it, only a choked, “Wait.”

Lyosha seemed to crumble into a pile of brown leaves.

Aliya had so many uncertainties, she didn’t know where to start. She needed to clear things up about Dasha, but if Lyosha couldn’t handle the rest, that wouldn’t matter. “If I wanted to go somewhere far away, would you follow me? For a long time, or for good. If I decided to spend a year in Spain, or New Zealand, would you come with me?”

“Not much bobsledding in Spain or New Zealand,” Lyosha said with a laugh.

“Well, Canada, then, or Norway. It doesn’t matter where, so much as - would you go? For me?”

“Why would you want to do that, though?” He was still on one knee, still waiting to put a ring on her finger.

“I don’t know if I do,” Aliya said. “I just want to know that if I did, you’d be by my side.”

He pressed his thin lips together until they disappeared. He couldn’t say yes any more than she could. “You don’t want to be in Russia? What can you get in any of those places that isn’t in Russia?”

“Everything,” Aliya said. “The whole world.”

“But you’re my whole world,” Lyosha said. “I’m not yours?”

Aliya told herself to stop being ridiculous and take the ring. But a wise voice in the back of her head told her she couldn’t start a marriage with a lie. She didn’t want someone to be her whole world. She didn’t think that was possible. She wanted someone by her side no matter what, and maybe that wasn’t possible either.

She managed to keep herself from crying until she got home.

When Aliya’s eyes dried out, she booked a flight to Rio. She proceeded like she was planning a two-week holiday, with a return ticket and a hotel stay. If this was a mistake, she could always turn around and go home. 

She got coffee with Dasha before she left. “I’m going back to Brazil for a while,” she said.

“And you’re not taking me with you?” Dasha leaned across the table, grinning thirstily, but stopped short of a kiss.

“I would if you wanted,” Aliya said. “But you have training, and Nikita. I have endless press appearances that make me want to stab everyone with a fork, and a perfectly sweet guy that I can’t convince myself to marry.”

Dasha shook her head. News of the failed proposal had gotten around. “Go on ahead, and I’ll meet you there later.”

Aliya smiled, breathing in the steam of her coffee, unwilling to break the spell by asking if Dasha really meant it.

“You have to promise me something, though,” Dasha said. “Buy a different bikini for every day of the week. You can’t go to the beach wearing the same ratty thing every day.”

“Is that all?”

“And then you have to FaceTime me and show them off,” Dasha said.

“Oh, that’s how it goes?” For a moment, Aliya didn’t want to leave Moscow. She wanted to stare into Dasha’s eyes forever. She knew, though, that she only wanted it because when she looked away, she saw all the reasons to make her escape.

**[Rio]**  


For the first week, it did feel like a holiday, not like real life. Aliya took two-hour breakfasts, sipping _cafezinhos_ and munching _pão de queijo_ that the hotel cafe served in a cloth-lined basket. After that, she headed to the beach to lie on a towel all day reading trashy spy novels. After the sun went down, she’d return to the hotel and watch the people and cars from high above. The city stayed noisy deep into the night, but she’d never had so much peace in her life.

On the second Monday of her adventure, Aliya emailed the best gym in Rio to see if she could get a job. After two meetings conducted in broken English and hand gestures, plus an autograph session with a starstruck throng of little gymnasts, the head coach offered to help get her settled and apply for a work visa, on the condition that she hurry up and learn Portuguese. 

By the time Aliya was supposed to board a return flight to Moscow, she had signed a lease on an airy white-walled flat with a balcony that, if she stood just so in the very corner, looked out distantly onto the ocean. The first thing she did after she bought a Brazilian SIM card for her phone was break the news to her parents. Aliya had braced herself for a fight, but instead, her mother calmly asked for an address to ship her things. They acted like they’d already figured out what she was up to. “It won’t be forever,” Aliya said, although she wasn’t sure it was true.

Aliya talked to Dasha a few times a week. The glitches in FaceTime made her feel like she was calling from somewhere even farther away than the other side of the world. “It’s raining,” Aliya told her. “There’s the most delicious smell after it rains here. It might be pollution, but I don’t care. And it’s so warm after it rains, like standing in the shower with the water turned off and the steam making clouds all around you.”

“I remember,” Dasha said. “It was incredible. My life is so boring right now.” She rubbed her shoulder to drive home the point. She’d strained it and had been told to rest it for at least a month. Aliya hated waiting out injuries, but Dasha was more restless than Aliya had ever been, like her skin had shrunk in the wash and she had to squirm until it stretched back out again.

“Would you? Get on a plane?” Aliya didn’t want to get her hopes up too high.

“Well, maybe not _right_ away,” Dasha said. “But soon. I miss you.”

The next few times they talked, Aliya hinted at Dasha’s visit, but Dasha wouldn’t give her any clues. Maybe she’d thought better of it. Aliya tried to move on from her, to smile at the Brazilian boys and girls who were so pretty from a distance, but they opened wounds in her heart that she hadn’t realized were there. She wasn’t over Lyosha, the certainty and stability he’d brought, the way he’d looked at her like she was the only woman in the world. She wasn’t ready for someone to look at her that way again.

So she spent her mornings at the gym, helping little girls learn hip circles and kips, astonished by how much she could accomplish with so few words in common. Three evenings a week, she went to Portuguese conversation classes, and on Friday nights, she went out with a group of her classmates - all from different countries, with no other language in common - to drink caipirinhas and practice their vocabulary. And in the afternoons, if it wasn’t raining, she went to the beach. It was a strange life, but it was paradise.

One afternoon, shortly after she’d stopped wishing for it, Aliya got a message from Dasha with a travel itinerary. Aliya had spent the whole morning with the head coach of the gym where she’d been working and an immigration lawyer, figuring out the cumbersome process of acquiring a long-term residency visa. The phrase “long-term” gave her the same stomach butterflies as podium practice before an important meet. And the thought of Dasha arriving in a week’s time made the butterflies flap even harder.

A week later, Dasha got out of her taxi with an enormous suitcase, almost as tall as she was and probably heavier, too. She wore a lopsided ponytail and the rumpled clothes of a long flight, but Aliya had never seen her so beautiful. She kissed Dasha in the middle of the lobby, without thinking. In Russia, they would never have dared, but here, one of Aliya’s neighbors called out a cheerful _“Bom dia”_ like there was nothing less remarkable than two girls kissing in public.

“How long are you staying?” Aliya asked once they’d hefted the suitcase into her flat. She led Dasha onto the balcony to show off the view. 

“How long does a tourist visa last here? Three months? I hadn’t planned ahead, I can’t train until my shoulder heals, and I was thinking of taking the year off from competing anyway. So we’ll see how long I last. If you want me here, that is.”

Aliya pulled Dasha into an embrace, clasping her hands at the small of Dasha’s back. “I don’t want you anywhere else.”

Dasha kissed the bridge of her nose. “How long are _you_ staying?”

“I don’t know,” Aliya said. “As long as I want to. I’m going on a side trip to Argentina in a few weeks. When I get back, I’ll have a residency visa, and the gym can hire me officially instead of slipping me cash under the table.”

“I’ll come with you,” Dasha said. “We’ll tango down the streets of Buenos Aires.” She kissed Aliya, catching Aliya’s lips with her teeth and tugging space for her tongue. Once she had her way, though, she became gentle, letting Aliya take the lead. Aliya tangled the tips of their tongues together, then made a move for her neck, nipping to leave a mark. 

“You haven’t kissed me like that since the last time we were in Rio,” Dasha said.

“I kissed you a few times back in Moscow,” Aliya said.

“Yeah, but not the same way.” Dasha broke away from Aliya’s arms to lean on the balcony railing. “You were sleepwalking the whole time, weren’t you? You were waiting to wake up here.”

“Was I? I guess so.” Aliya stood by Dasha’s side, looking out at the shops and cars below. They’d become familiar, a reassurance that she was home. 

“You’re never going back to Russia, are you?” Dasha said.

“I’ll have to visit,” Aliya said. “My parents would kill me. And who knows? Maybe I’ll get homesick eventually. But for now, I feel like I belong here, more than in Moscow.”

Dasha came up behind Aliya, wrapping her thin and powerful arms under Aliya’s breasts. “Then I belong here, too, at least part of the time.” She’d come through on enough of her promises that Aliya believed her.


End file.
